Other advocacy topics include gender bias, both culturally and from within the legal system, visitation, adoption, maternal gatekeeping and parental alienation.
Michael Newdow contended that the best interest of the child standard, as currently applied by family courts, violated the equal protection clause of the U.S.
[5] They add that these employees improperly received immunity from the Massachusetts Supreme Court,[6] threatened mothers with the loss of their children to coerce them into divorce[7] and to attend support groups.
[8] Female opponents at legislative hearings alleged harassment and threats of physical harm by advocates,[9] while members stated that the National Organization for Women and others had possibly fabricated the claims to get attention as part of a plan to paint non-custodial parents as extremists.
(Signed into law: August 11, 2009) SB 1590, sponsored by Sen. Pamela Althoff and in the House by Rep. Sandra Pihos, and which passed unanimously, allows children and non-custodial parents to use electronic visitation technologies such as email, telephone, internet and video conferencing.
[11] A father's rights activist appealed to a Massachusetts state legislator who wrote an environmental law (named Anti-Slapp) intended to protect whistleblowers from punitive countersuits by corporations and which was rewritten by the Massachusetts Supreme Court to immunize mothers and social workers who file false allegations, noting that fathers have virtually no remedy for false allegations of abuse.
[12] In 2004, some Massachusetts voters were offered a chance to vote on a non-binding ballot question about creating a legislative presumption for joint physical custody.
[40] Members also protested a Boston Globe article about a case in which a father successfully prevented a mother from moving children 70 miles away to another state.